Defining the Jedi: Courage
by LMSharp
Summary: Part of my Defining the Jedi student series. When the Ebon Hawk crashes on Malachor V's surface and its crew are separated from one another, Mira is the only one with power that promises any hope of finding the others, Darden, and their enemies. But when she is confronted with a fear she thought she left in her past, Mira must fight back with the courage of a true Jedi.


**Disclaimer.**

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Defining the Jedi: Courage

Mira stared down at the galaxy map in the main hold and looked at the projection of the planets. The ship was too quiet. A couple weeks ago, standing here, she would have heard the sound of Echani kicks against food stores or lightsaber passes from the cargo hold, and _some_ sort of mechanical process going on in the garage or the engine room. But even though the Handmaiden had returned to the ship at last—Brianna, Mira reminded herself—she was out just now. Atton and Darden were out, too. No one knew what had happened to HK-47. Good riddance, as far as Mira was concerned. And Bao-Dur…Bao-Dur was dead.

Mira pressed her lips together and tried to focus. They'd said what they needed to say this morning, let him go. Crying over him now would just be a distraction. There was work to do.

Nihilus had been bad. As far as Mira could tell, he was supposed to be worse than Sion and Kreia combined. But she figured they'd had the advantage on Telos. Kreia was smart, taking the fight to Malachor V. Even aside from any galaxy-ending consequences if Kreia died—or Darden fell—there, Dar would be fighting at an enormous disadvantage, surrounded with all the fallout of that brilliant military success where she'd killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed a fracking planet. What Darden Leona had done at Malachor V had more than halfway killed her, if Atton and Mical had it right. It'd made her whatever she was, and it still haunted her dreams and stalked her, like a predator. What would going back do to her? What would feeling what it'd done to her do to the rest of them? Or to the galaxy?

Mira sighed. _Osik_, she wasn't like Bao-Dur. Or Mical. She just hoped the pretty boy was right, and Bao-Dur had planned for this somehow, programmed something into that remote of his, and that was why it'd come back. Dar would have to sort that out, though. Force knew she wasn't any slicer. She was better with big bombs, and she didn't know what the hell Kreia had planned. Only that it was bad, and they needed to stop her.

"Have you moved since I've been gone?" a soft voice asked.

Mira almost jumped out of her skin. "Force, Handm—Brianna!" she snapped. "I didn't hear the ramp open! There aren't many people that can get the drop on me. Do you even touch the ground when you step?"

"I have been trained to expend as little energy as possible in movement," Brianna replied, thoroughly unconcerned. "What troubles you?"

"Are the others with you?" Mira asked, instead of answering the question.

"Darden and Atton? No. We did not leave the ship together," Brianna answered. "I went to see my sisters, one last time. When I left, I saw Darden in conversation with Lieutenant Dol Grenn. Atton went his own way. If Darden has not yet returned, I imagine she found him."

Mira grimaced. "I'll just bet," she muttered. Atton was alright, but aside from a decent sense of humor and a nice head of hair, she really didn't know what Darden saw in the guy, romantically speaking. Half the time he had no idea who he was, and the rest of the time, he was usually wrong. But there'd been _something_ there ever since she'd met the two on Nar Shaddaa, and ever since Dantooine, the first time, they'd been working up to a boil. He'd kissed her in front of a random Onderonian soldier and everybody down there on Citadel Station, before she'd gone off to face Nihilus, and she'd kissed him back, though, so Mira guessed they were done trying to hide it. Like they'd ever fooled anybody. Well. Maybe Visas, but she was blind and an alien besides, so who knew how much she understood or didn't. Anyway, they were all off again in the morning to face impending doom, but for tonight they were docked on Citadel, and the crew still had access to one of the Republic apartments on the station. Mira knew what _she'd _be doing, if she were them.

"What troubles you?" Brianna asked.

Mira gestured at the map. "I don't know how Dar's gonna dodge this one," she said. "I mean, if she doesn't go, Kreia'll suicide. Maybe that kills her, maybe it doesn't, but I know she doesn't want it to happen. But if we go to Malachor—it'll be tough for her. Tougher than it's ever been. She could fall—and then she'd be like Nihilus, only worse. That's what Kreia wants. The death of the Force—of all life in the galaxy. But if Darden doesn't fall, if things don't play out like that—"

"Then Darden will kill Kreia, or Kreia will destroy Darden," Brianna agreed, following. "Either one could mean Darden's destruction. And at Malachor, where loss, where the Dark Side is so amplified…"

"Yeah."

"We must go," Brianna said. "There is no alternative."

"No, I know. I said I was with her, didn't I? I just can't see a way that this has a happy ending."

Brianna was quiet a moment. "It may not," she admitted. "But if we abandoned her, the shame would follow us the rest of our lives."

"She was going to abandon us," Mira said flatly. "You heard her this morning. She was planning to face Kreia alone. I don't know. Anything might happen when we get there. We could still get separated."

"Why do you say that?" Brianna asked, curious.

Mira shifted. "I got a feeling," she said uncomfortably. "Just a feeling that it won't be as easy as walking across Malachor to take Kreia down, hand in hand."

"You should trust your feelings," Brianna told her. "The Force is strong with you, Mira. And if you are correct, if we are separated, when we get to Malachor, we will look to you. You find people, do you not? You will have to find Darden, or you will have to find Kreia—before the end."

It was good to have Brianna back. She was so self-assured, Mira thought. So serene. The Zen Jedi stuff seemed to come so easy to the rest of them, Mira thought. Well, not Atton. But the others. Brianna, Visas, Mical. Bao-Dur. She'd never been able to be that calm. That brave.

"We may perish in this fight," Brianna added, very quietly. "I have said my goodbyes. But it is a good battle, a good cause, a good death."

Mira wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed. Hard. "Good or not—I don't want to die yet, Brianna," she admitted.

* * *

The ground looked like an insane abstract painting, cracked and scarred without rhyme or reason, and the wind, whipping up the open ramp as the _Ebon Hawk_ plummeted toward the planet, stung Mira's face and made her cough. The green sky crackled with an electrical storm that seemed to go on forever, and over everything, the Force screamed. Worse than Nar Shaddaa, worse than the ruins on Dantooine, worse than fracking _Korriban_. Ten thousand lives ripped into oblivion, a planet destroyed, defiled in a moment.

Behind her, Mira heard Darden running up. "Don't just stand there!" she snapped. "Jump!"

"Where is Atton?" Visas asked.

"Saving our lives! But only if you _jump_!" Darden yelled. Mira heard the tears in her throat. Brianna's wide blue eyes looked back at Mira, panicked, just for a second. Then she jumped. Mira leaped after her.

Gripping the straps of her chute tightly, Mira desperately tried to angle her body appropriately, trying like crazy to remember that one lesson she'd had over twelve years ago and wishing more than anything her training had been formal like Mandalore's. Like Mical's or Atton's, she wondered? Darden's? Anyway, she was pretty sure Brianna and Visas didn't have a clue what they were doing, either. And maybe Atton wouldn't even be able to make the jump in time. Force, what if he died, too? Sometimes he was an idiot, but he was her friend. The only one besides Darden on the bucket that knew how to laugh.

The wind battered and buffeted at her like it was trying to tear her apart, whistling past her ears as the ground raced up toward her, and Mira yanked at the string and begged her parachute to open, not to break.

She gasped as the air caught the open chute and abruptly arrested her building momentum. She wondered if the harness would leave a bruise, decided she didn't care. But where the hell should she—Mira craned her head around, trying to see the others. Over her head, the crashing Ebon Hawk had cut an angry trail through the thick atmosphere, and against the lightning, Mira could see one, two, three…four other parachutes falling behind her, drifting down at various altitudes toward the landscape below. She scanned the sky for a fifth, but didn't see one. Atton _hadn't_ made the jump. But turning around, she saw Brianna maybe a couple klicks ahead, getting very close to the ground now.

Mira turned her thoughts to her own landing, searching the ground. There were fissures and plateaus everywhere, she saw. Some ran together, some did not, in the random mishmash that had occurred eleven years ago when the Mass Shadow Generator had crushed Malachor V into itself a freak gravity field the likes of which had never been seen before or replicated since. She saw ships, too. Wrecks, some half-buried in the ground. They'd been looking for wrecks like that in orbit, before the Sith had fired on them. Now everything was different.

Mira guessed the only thing she could do was try _not_ to land on the very edge of a plateau, so that her momentum immediately carried her off a cliff or her chute caught on a precipice. And it seemed like a big wide fissure was going to be a much better target, so Mira angled her body toward it like she was headed down a runway, moving her legs in a run already.

The jolt of impact still sent shocks up her legs, and she still fell flat on her face. The parachute landed on top of her, tangling Mira in a knot of cords and fabric and shutting out the dim light that penetrated Malachor's opaque atmosphere and down into the trench.

Mira groaned and staggered to her feet, wrestling with the chute. She found her lightsaber, and started cutting, until she eventually managed to extricate herself. She kicked the thing away, glaring.

She coughed. The air here was toxic, hot and foul, but she'd lived in the fumes of Nar Shaddaa for years, and survived then, so she adjusted to that quickly enough. The gravity was harder—Mira felt as fat as a bantha, and about as maneuverable. But it was the Force that was hardest to bear, the screaming rage of a violated, broken planet, the deafening echoes of a hundred thousand lives lost. All around her, Mira could see them—the downed ships of Mandalorians and Republics alike. Broken corpses, skeletons stripped clean of clothes and flesh by the air here. The one just fifty meters away, next to the fissure wall, was dressed in Mandalorian armor that hadn't disintegrated so easily, though. Mira couldn't make out the clan insignia painted on the arm, though. She shuddered, wondering if she'd known the guy.

"Well," she said aloud, then winced. Her voice was hoarse and raspy. She cleared her throat, then spoke again. "This is just a slice of galactic paradise, isn't it? More metal, jagged rocks, and…"

A roar rang out from the distance, reverberating off the rock walls of the canyon.

"Yep, bloodthirsty beasts," Mira finished, more quietly, gripping her lightsaber and so thankful she'd practiced so hard the past three weeks. "Just great."

Mira shifted her feet, measuring the strain the warped gravity put on her. It wasn't unlike wearing several extra kilos of plate armor, back in the day, but the fact was she'd tire easily. She looked around, and couldn't see anyone alive in the area, but they could've jumped out over a huge area of the planet. There might not be any of the others around for kilometers. If they'd even survived.

Mira set her jaw. If they had survived, it didn't matter how far they were. She'd find them. She stretched out with the Force, forcing herself to listen past the screams of Malachor V for her friends.

Brianna was closest. She could sense the Echani girl, almost directly due south. Unfortunately, the fissure she was in only went southwest. So Mira hiked her pack up on her shoulders, and set out to the southwest.

She didn't see herself being followed.

The thing was, he didn't show himself until right when Mira thought she might be getting someplace. The route she'd chosen had gone down and south, deeper into the planet. As near as she could tell, Brianna was heading north like she was heading south, following the trajectory of the crash, but they'd been farther apart than she'd thought at first and they hadn't met up yet. Meanwhile, Mira guessed the Sith were the way she was heading, because with every step, she felt the Dark Side pulsing more strongly, and the air had started clearing of fog and gas, become easier to breathe. Someone was cleaning it up down here.

The lizard-things hadn't been too much of a problem. They thought they were bad with their sonic attacks, but they almost always let 'em off too soon, pinpointing exactly where they were, and Mira's rockets and grenades were badder than a little high-pitched screaming.

Mira'd seen a metal gate in the distance, one that wasn't warped or broken. It'd been built after the deployment of the Mass Shadow Generator, and she'd slowed down. The Sith couldn't be far. She just hoped Brianna was closer.

Only then he'd dropped off a cliff right in front of her.

Mira gasped, then narrowed her eyes. It made an awful sort of sense that he'd show up here, now, when she had better things to do. He always had the worst timing. Except she'd been almost sure she'd killed him in Visquis' sick little arena.

She put her hand on her hip, next to her lightsaber. "You have got to be kidding me, Hanharr."

Hanharr's black eyes glittered in his matted face. /The gray-maned female brought me here to hunt,/ he growled. /To hunt you. You have always been prey, Mira. Weak, scared, always running. Hesitant to kill./

His words stoked the old fears. Running like a rat through the tunnels and alleys, hanging over a canyon, held by her throat, kicking and fighting to stay conscious as the edges of her vision blurred and her words couldn't pass his claws. Mira stepped back instinctively, before she remembered things were different now, and activated her single-hilt lightsaber. The violet blade slid out, and Hanharr almost seemed to smile.

/Here, on this graveyard planet, you have nowhere left to run,/ he almost purred. /The eyes of Nar Shaddaa do not look here, and what happens here shall only be between you and I. Run, prey. Or fight me, here. I can feel the rage of this planet pouring through me. Yet it is nothing compared to the hate I have for you./

He raised his dual vibroswords, woven especially to withstand any melee combat, even with lightsabers, roared, and attacked.

Mira didn't run. _Gray-maned female_, he'd said. This was Kreia. Kreia'd manipulated Canderous, messed with Mical's head, betrayed Darden and killed all the Jedi, and now she'd set this up for Mira. Mira wanted to know why. More than that, she wanted to gut the old witch for her games. She didn't have the _time_.

Niman, she decided, taking the neutral stance. Makashi and Ataru required too much strength, and no matter what she'd learned, Hanharr still stupidly outclassed her in height, weight, and rage. But she sure as hell wasn't going to make this a defensive battle. She _wasn't_ prey. Not anymore. Mira deflected Hanharr's first downstroke, but kept moving. She didn't want to give him a chance to lock blades and use his strength. Speed was her best friend in this fight, and at least she'd always been faster than this Wookiee. Mira was slightly gratified to see his eyes darken in confusion as she sidestepped and feinted at his right side, then ducked under his left blade and brought her lightsaber round and up toward his unprotected center. Hanharr managed to block her stroke, but barely. Barely. Mira grinned.

She was grateful, so grateful now that as often as not she'd ended up partnering Mical in evening lightsaber sparring. It'd been embarrassing at the time—she and Mical were the newbies to melee combat, the beginner class, so to speak—but Mical was the only pupil of Darden's that favored out-and-out dual wielding, rather than a single hilt or a double blade. Largely, Mira had developed her lightsaber technique in response to dual wielding. And she needed every bit of it now.

Hanharr had been forcing her back, but now Mira waved her left hand, using the Force in a mental manipulation somewhere between that Beast Trick Dar had shown her and the standard Jedi Mind Trick. Hanharr wasn't weak-willed, but his eyes clouded for a single moment, and it was all Mira needed to dodge under his blades again and run around him, away from the cliff he'd been trying to crush her against. Hanharr let out a roar of frustration.

He turned and they were at it again. It took all of Mira's concentration to avoid being spitted a couple of times, or sliced in half. But Hanharr had trained with scum, and Mira soon found that she outstripped his melee skill now. It surprised her the first time she landed a glancing blow on Hanharr's furry hide and smelled burnt fur and flesh. He let out a howl of pain. She landed another blow, and another, deeper each time. He was wearying. She was better than him. The realization rocked Mira's universe a little. She _had_ feared Hanharr for so long. But now…in melee combat she was still the weakest of Darden's students. But she was better than Hanharr.

Predictably, as Hanharr's wounds worsened, he only gained strength as he flew into the berserker rage that so terrified his enemies. Mira knew she couldn't fight him much longer. The gravity was wearing on her, and each blow she deflected shook her down to her very bones. But as Hanharr gained strength, he got more and more careless, until finally, he left himself wide open and charged, teeth gnashing, eyes red with the mad battle-light.

Mira sidestepped and lashed out with a backhand stroke that severed the Wookiee's right arm. Arm and sword fell to the ground. Hanharr roared again, and fell to his knees. He half-raised his left sword, then stopped, as Mira leveled her saber at the Wookiee's throat.

Hanharr panted, face contorted with pain and rage, but his gaze cleared. Just a little. He glared at her. /Kill me,/ he growled, rigidly controlling the pain in his voice. /And the life debt shall be settled. I cannot be in your debt twice; it will only be a second death to me. Whether you spare me or kill me, it is death./

Mira hesitated. She'd thought she'd killed him once before, and been glad, and she knew better than anyone he wouldn't quit hunting her if she spared him now. But looking at him there, charred in half a dozen places, his own arm lying on the ground at his feet, and still staring at her with hate-filled defiance…she didn't know. He asked for death, but it was different now, with him helpless at her feet. If she killed him now, it wouldn't be self-defense. It would just be killing. Malachor pulled at her, urging on her anger, the fear she'd lived with for so long, mandating she exert her strength now that she could. Even after everything that had happened here, the ground was still hungry.

Mira lowered her saber a few centimeters, though she didn't deactivate it. "You don't owe me a life debt, Hanharr!" she snapped. "I release you, okay? Just…just go."

Hanharr didn't move. Mira scanned his body once again, and wondered if with the severity of some of them, he'd be able to force his limbs to move past the pain, now the berserker rage had gone. /Words will not break the shackles on my wrists,/ he declared. /Words will not end the hatred I have for you. My hatred for you would drown the raging storms of this planet. It burns hotter than the hatred in the heart of the gray-maned woman…and greater than her feelings for the Exile./

Mira stared down at her purple lightsaber, turning her options over in her mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a form walking up from behind her, from the north, and recognized Mical. A surge of relief flooded her. She wasn't alone here! But Mira knew she couldn't turn away from Hanharr to greet him now, and Mical didn't approach.

"Kreia," Mira prompted the Wookiee, slowly. "She saved you on Nar Shaddaa, didn't she? I was sure I'd killed you. She sent you for me. Why do you serve her? She isn't paying you?"

Heavily, spitting the guttural sounds of his language, Hanharr replied, /She has chained me within a life debt. She honors me by showing no mercy, only hatred…she understands the heart of a warrior./

Mical watched Mira now, and Mira knew he understood what was happening here as well as she did. She sighed. "Hanharr, she played you. This isn't about your life debt to me or to her. She's using you. You're a test for me. You feel how this planet's all jacked up. Kreia knows if I kill you now, here, in cold blood—"

Hanharr half-raised his left sword again, and Mira raised her lightsaber in response to point at his throat once more. The Wookiee swallowed, then spat in Mira's face. The spit, mingled with blood that he'd obviously drawn trying to keep himself from roaring in pain, hit Mira's cheek and ran down her face. Behind her, Mira heard Mical activate his lightsabers, but he did not attack.

/You are weak,/ Hanharr ground out. His voice was fading fast. He had to be close to unconsciousness, Mira thought. /A child of the Hutt's moon, frightened, forever fearing the dark. You shall always be prey. If you do not…kill me now…I shall…hunt you through the paths of your mind until you die./ He tried to raise his sword yet again, grunted, and clutched the stump where his arm wasn't instead, swaying on his knees.

Hanharr's spit and blood were wet on Mira's face, but looking down at him, instead of fear or anger, she just felt pity and weariness. Now, after all she'd learned and seen, her once-nemesis reminded her of that woman Atris, on Telos. Lost in hatred, consumed by it, controlled by it. Words will not break the shackles on my wrists, Hanharr said. He'd escaped Czerka long ago, but he was still a slave. On Telos, Darden had left Atris to it, and she'd admitted that Atris' hatred and darkness would probably kill her, or drive her insane. It hadn't been mercy when Darden had left Atris alive. And it wasn't mercy to leave Hanharr alive. Not like this.

Mira looked into Hanharr's hate-filled eyes, and decided that she disagreed with what Darden had done on Telos. But Darden was right about something else. One she'd said when a Jedi killed, it was never out of fear, or hate, that the pieces they cut out of their soul when they ended a life were pieces given back to the Force: in self-defense, or to grant peace to others. Mira had assumed the others were innocents. But maybe there was a time when killing the lost, killing the broken, gave them peace, too. And then, making that sacrifice, like Darden had done at Malachor, to make an end, even if she sacrificed herself to do so: that was courage.

Finally, Mira spoke. "You're twisted, Hanharr. You're the prey, not me. Prey to your own warped honor, prey to your madness, and that's what won't let you rest, not me." She swallowed. "So be it. Die, then. Rejoin the Force. Maybe dead you'll find peace."

In a single, smooth movement, Mira stabbed her lightsaber through Hanharr's throat and drew it out again. He fell back, dead.

Behind her, Mical deactivated his lightsabers. Mira turned, deactivating her own, and Mical came to meet her. He looked at the Wookiee at her feet. "This is the Wookiee that hunted you before you met our Master?"

Mira wiped her face with her dirty sleeve. It didn't work. "Yeah. That was him. Kreia must've recruited him to track me down all the way back on Nar Shaddaa. Mandalore told me once the old hag probably had something on me."

Mical considered this. "She underestimated how you would grow if she thought that one would hinder you," he remarked.

Mira forced a smile she knew had too much teeth in it. "That's _not_ why she sent him."

"No," Mical agreed, looking away toward the north, back in the direction of the ship. His emotions roiled with the planet, Mira noticed. He was fighting hard. "This world…it seizes at every opportunity, every slip, death, and negative emotion. It consumes…" he paused, shook himself. "Mira, was there a right choice you could make here?" It was a genuine question.

Mira looked down at Hanharr, and anger hardened like a stone in her stomach. "No," she answered, quietly. "_That_ was the point."

* * *

**A/N: This ended up being much shorter than originally intended. Originally, Mira's and Mical's stories were going to overlap a bit more, but I like it better this way. There's not as much focus on how Mira let her anger at being manipulated into a situation where she had to make that sacrifice and kill a helpless opponent against her own moral code to grant him peace-when if Kreia had just left him be it wouldn't have been necessary—get into her head, even though the killing itself didn't. I think the emphasis on what Mira's learned is clearer, and also that she's going to be her own Jedi, even more than Brianna or Visas. Appropriate, given that in the future I imagine for my Order, while Brianna and Visas tend to stay on Coruscant, and help shape the ideas that will shape the Jedi, Mira will often be out in the galaxy in the "real world," so to speak, and will have to have the necessary flexibility and independence.**

**Anyway. **

**Coming Soon, because I'm pretty much on a roll right now and want to finish this up…**

**In the main **_**Defining the Jedi **_**storyline: For the first time, Darden Leona tells her partner the whole story of how she stormed the Trayus Academy to rescue her pupils and Mandalore. Atton tells how he battled Sion and how T3-M4 flew the repaired **_**Ebon Hawk**_** to the rescue, just as it had done before Peragus, nearly a year before. Darden recounts Sion's demise and her final confrontation with Darth Traya for Aithne, and concludes with a brief explanation of how droids delayed and then enabled the final destruction of Malachor and the healing of the Force. **

**And **_**Defining the Jedi: Leadership**_**—An enemy has been lying in wait for Darden Leona's Jedi pupils. Familiar with every student's every weakness, Darth Traya has captured Darden's pupils and seeks to turn them to the Dark Side, form them into weapons to use against her. Atton Rand alone has escaped, but Mical remains imprisoned with the others. In a place where every dark thought and ignoble intention is magnified, with his own doubts and losses preying on him every second, at the mercy of the full power of the Dark Side, Mical struggles to stay strong and preserve all that is left of the Jedi, the Order's only hope for the future, against the enemy. Stay tuned for the final installment of my Defining the Jedi student series! **


End file.
